One thing that is worrying to me is that with all the things that are going on in Turkey they are still getting f-35's. The way I see it, the minute erdogan gets his paws on one is the minute Putin and Xi do, too. Surely our leaders must be thinking the same thing, but what can be done, or more realistically, what will be done?

I understand that much of the f-35 is software driven, but there are other things that are not, like engines and RAM. I'm no expert on this, but can't the baddies glean some stuff by scraping up some RAM and reverse-engineering the engines?

white_lightning35 wrote:One thing that is worrying to me is that with all the things that are going on in Turkey they are still getting f-35's. The way I see it, the minute erdogan gets his paws on one is the minute Putin and Xi do, too. Surely our leaders must be thinking the same thing, but what can be done, or more realistically, what will be done?

I understand that much of the f-35 is software driven, but there are other things that are not, like engines and RAM. I'm no expert on this, but can't the baddies glean some stuff by scraping up some RAM and reverse-engineering the engines?

While this is true and the concern is not zero ...Russians have been reverse engineering engines since ... well since their first jet engine picking up metal flakes in the soles of their shoes in Britain. Ideas on RAM approaches theoretically have publicly been cussed and discussed ad nauseam.

The difficulty, and it isn't cheap even if you get it right is the material sciences, and especially the manufacturing and construction to tight tolerance. The Turks do not have access to those to the best of my knowledge. As discussed here somewhere, even when the Chinese do a "cookie cutter" copy as in the J-31, they screw up some of the very things that might be in the secret sauce to their detriment, (see post nozzle horizontal tail layouts)... because they can't make a single engine that powerful, even using the metal in their shoe soles.

Let's hope LM, P&W, and key suppliers are protecting their "key" trade secrets better than some have in the past. If nothing else to keep them away from Boeing and GE.

I actually think the F-35 might temper Turkey some, since they may have a nagging wonder/doubt as to if the US has a secret cut-off switch in ALIS. Even if they don't, .. Turkey has to think about it before they dump NATO et al ...

Thank you for the informed response, my good sir. Being just a high school student and not having much (actually any) real world experience with this type of thing, I greatly appreciate the wealth of knowledge you and others on this forum freely share, for it allows me to gain valuable insight into these sorts of things to gain a head start for going into these fields.

white_lightning35 wrote:Thank you for the informed response, my good sir. Being just a high school student and not having much (actually any) real world experience with this type of thing, I greatly appreciate the wealth of knowledge you and others on this forum freely share, for it allows me to gain valuable insight into these sorts of things to gain a head start for going into these fields.

Good to see you here. Did you read Gen Davis' parting comment? "It's a Great time to be a Marine!" I think many of us are envious of being where you are.Meanwhile,

blindpilot wrote:...even when the Chinese do a "cookie cutter" copy as in the J-31, they screw up some of the very things that might be in the secret sauce to their detriment,...

As seen by the long development time of the F-22 and F-35, aircraft design (especially 5th gen) is a mountain of billions and billions of details, worked in a maze of interdependent pieces. It is literally, (and as seen in some accident investigations, actually) sometimes just a new tech design of a single bolt that makes a domino fall of features possible. If you don't get the bolt right, you don't get the features.

You can't run 5th gen fighter jets on a copy machine/3 D printer and get the same result. Maybe some day, but not today. You have to dig up a couple hundred billion dollars just to get to play in the game. And that's with no guarantee you'll get what you paid for. Turkey nor Russia have the couple hundred $B to spare. China does, but they have an entire infrastructure (including High School curriculum, to have graduates to send to engineering school to learn how they did it in the '70s) to flesh out, and mature. They are still buying jet engines from Russia. And they will, until the new engineers have gotten 20 years experience in state of the art. There is no YouTube video for this.(yet)

Probably search the F-35 section of the forum for TAMPER would get some results. Otherwise the F-35 has been designed from the getgo to be exportable - the F-22 was not thusly designed. The F-35 has a shedload of tamper proof technology to keep it safe from the untoward. Exactly what that means is not my privilege to know-sorry-next life as indicated above.

blindpilot wrote:I actually think the F-35 might temper Turkey some, since they may have a nagging wonder/doubt as to if the US has a secret cut-off switch in ALIS.

Wishful thinking, I am afraid. The reality is that they are using their American built F-16's now to bomb the same Kurds we are supporting in our fight against ISIS. I think if you expect them to utilize the F-35 to support soley NATO/Western/American interests you will be greatly disappointed.

Through the coup and subsequent crackdown, it is quite evident that Turkey is careening towards a dictatorship with Erdoğan at the helm. Last month his cronies even had the audacity to beat peaceful protesters on American soil and then demanded an apology from the US Goverment that our police stopped them during the act. So their Government that makes a mockery of laws and democratic values, yet we are trusting them with our most sensitive military technology?

We need only look to the Iranian Tomcats still flying around for outcomes of exporting high performance equipment to unstable governments. Turkey's membership in NATO should not blind us from this reality.

I really don't like to deal with politics. But when somebody has wrong information about my country, or when he/she tries to misinform the others, then...Yes, Turkey seems to be changed in some terms, but, unfortunately, this is mostly due to the fact that, our region is changing/being devastated horribly... How can you talk about Turkey, without talking about Iraq, Syria, Russia,... For the last 15 years, we are the indirect victim of all these horrible events in our region. And what about our Allies(!). They don't help us even struggling the coup attempters...

And what about Kurds? First of all, US is allying with Marxist/Leninist Terrorist YPG/PKK, not the Kurds. If you want to talk about Kurds, then go to the Northern Iraq, or SE Turkey. But don't use the word Kurds to refer to this terrorist YPG/PKK simply because they are composed of Kurds.

Unfortunately, Turkey is not very good at telling and spreading the truths about herself. But if you really want to learn about what is happening in this region, then you can start by not believing everything you see on CNN, Fox, RT, etc, etc....

Reverse engineering is easier said than done. The Russians did rebuild some of our tech, but that was when it was less sophisticated. They still haven't managed to build a jet engine that has the same reliability or life expectancy comparable to ours. They can have the schematics, but they do not have the metallurgy techniques to create comparable materials. Knowing the answer to a question doesn't mean you know the formula on how to get it.

kimjongnumbaun wrote:Reverse engineering is easier said than done. The Russians did rebuild some of our tech, but that was when it was less sophisticated. They still haven't managed to build a jet engine that has the same reliability or life expectancy comparable to ours. They can have the schematics, but they do not have the metallurgy techniques to create comparable materials. Knowing the answer to a question doesn't mean you know the formula on how to get it.

As an observation, isn't it odd that the Russians cannot reverse engineer US gas turbines, purportedly for metallurgy shortcomings, when they performed "magic" with their rocket engines vis-a-vis the RD-170 / RD-180 family of oxygen-rich, staged-combustion rocket engines. In the 1990s, US engineers reportedly did not believe it was possible to accomplish what the Russians had with oxygen-rich staged combustion rockets, and then they were shown the RD-170/180 family.

Just because you may have specialty expertise in one realm of material sciences, doesn't translate to other areas.

Take an F-16, stir in a little A-7, bake, then sprinkle on a generous helping of F-117. What do you get? An F-35.